Ontario CPU hits nano ITX

AMD’s soon to launch first ever 40nm Ontario CPU is going to appear in the compact nano ITX form factor. It is originaly designed for notebooks, netbooks and the like, but Fusion parts will get to the nano ITX format as well.

HTPC customers will definitely be excited about this one as Ontario supports graphics with DirectX 11 support, UVD 3.0 decode engine, 1080i and 1080P HD as we well as VC1, H.264 and MPEG-4 full hardware supported HD player. This all fits in 120x120 mm motherboard and it comes with an HDMI connector and even boards with two HDMI connectors are possible.

Such board will only have place for DDR3 SODIMM laptop memory slots but it is still quite impressive to pack anything DirectX 11 capable in such a small form factor. The chipset of choice is codenamed Hudson and it brings SATA 3 or 6 depending on the chipset and USB 2.0 in its cheaper iteration. More expensive boards might get USB 3.0.

Ontario can get embedded version as well and it should settle with 9W TDP. At this TDP, you still need some low RPM fan but you will get a very power efficient platform.